


worse ways to go

by BubblyWashingMachine



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Agatha doesn't seem to exist, Banter, First Kiss, Idiots in Love, Kinda self harm, M/M, Not sure why, Pre-Canon, Risk Taking, SnowBaz, need I specify that this has a happy ending, probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-22 16:50:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13768374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BubblyWashingMachine/pseuds/BubblyWashingMachine
Summary: Simon Snow is addicted - to the danger, the rush, the fear that grows inside him when he so much as looks at Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch.But the only way to get him to pay attention seems to be when Simon's life is in danger.He only wanted to see what would happen.





	1. The first time

**Author's Note:**

> So I was half-asleep when I came up with the idea and honestly, after writing it, I can't decide if it's the worst thing to ever come out of me or if it's the greatest thing I've ever written.

The first time it happened, it was an accident.

I was walking –practically sprinting, because I was running late – down the stairs to breakfast. I’d slept in longer than usual, and couldn’t find a clean shirt (there had been a brief, embarrassing moment where I’d considered using one of Baz’, that’s how desperate I was). The stairwell was packed with students who had probably slept in too; we were all pushing and shoving our way past one another.

Anyway, I don’t remember exactly how, but I’m pretty sure a third-year stuck his foot out and tripped me, definitely on purpose. There was this awful moment where my stomach dropped and I thought I was utterly going to die – the great Simon Snow, killed by a fall down the stairs. Imagine the headlines.

I felt weightless. My wand fell out of my pocket and clattered to the stone steps with a sharp clinking noise, I remember. Not like it would have helped me anyway. My foot missed the next stair, and the next, and my body kind of twisted around and I knocked over several people as I barrelled my way, sideways, through the crowd. Everyone was scrambling to get out of my way. I couldn’t really hear much, but some girls were screaming near my head and my other foot missed the mark and everything tilted.

By this time, I was practically horizontal. I could see the scared-shitless faces of everyone on the stairs above us, looking down, and I kept waiting for my head to hit the stones.

But instead of the cracking of my skull and the splatter of my brains hitting the walls – I had landed heavily in someone’s arms. I don’t know how I didn’t completely knock him over, but Baz had somehow caught me right before I hit the ground.

I didn’t know it was him at first. I kind of gasped a lot, tried to hear something over the blood rushing in my ears. His chest wasn’t warm, but he was strong –really strong. Vampire strength, I guess. He waited for me to catch my breath, before putting me back on my feet – a bad decision. My legs collapsed almost immediately, and he had to sort of hug me again to keep me from falling over.

I think, looking back, that this was when I suddenly realised who he was. But, I didn’t freak out right away, I just stared up at him in shock, because… well… Baz had just saved my life. And he didn’t even look smug or uptight about it either – he looked openly scared. And slightly angry.

Our faces were so close together, I could smell him properly. He doesn’t smell exactly like his bathroom products would have you believe. He smelt like wood first. And then cigarette smoke (which didn’t make sense at the time), and _then_ a little like fancy shampoo and his special cologne.

And his eyes weren’t just grey. They were also green, and brown in the middle, and a dark blue at the edges. He was looking very surprised - I think I had been staring at him long enough that he thought I was officially in shock or actually brain-dead.  He probably had expected me to use my closeness to stab him or something. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that at the time.

I pulled away.

Immediately his expression hardened back to what I was used to. I suddenly became aware of all the people staring at us, and my legs almost buckled again.

“Uh, I, thanks,” I said profoundly. He nodded once, and then caught himself, and sneered.

“Can you pay attention to where you put your feet, for once? Next time, I’ll just let you fall.”

My mouth opened and closed like a dying fish. He smirked again, doing that thing where people look at your feet and drag their eyes slowly up your body until it feels like every part of you has been catalogued, priced and put up for sale.

I realised that I liked the smell of his cologne.


	2. The second time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Falling, falling, falling towards each other

Okay, I’m not sure if the second time really counts, because all Baz did was say my name and look me in the eye. But it worked, so who am I to complain?

I was working on a spell in class – **speak of the devil** , a relatively difficult spell which is meant to act kind of like teleportation, summoning someone to you. Everyone was summoning their friends with varying degrees of success, but all I was doing was sprouting horns and setting things on fire. Miss said that it was because of my inflection (I always put too much emphasis on nouns), and so instead of teleporting Penny to me from across the room I was becoming a literal, actual devil. Predictable.

Still kind of impressive if you ask me.

I could see Baz out of the corner of my eye, making Dev appear from seemingly nowhere. His posture was on point, too – his arm was perfectly straight, legs slightly apart, shoulders back. I felt like a troll next to him. I hated him. He saw me looking, and raised an eyebrow.

The first few times I stuffed up the spell, Penny quickly reverted it, put out the fire. But I could feel my magic becoming more and more unstable. I was getting angry, and wasn’t listening to her telling me to stop trying. People were glaring at me, pointedly, probably because of the thick smell of smoke. I grit my teeth.

**“Speak! Of! The! Devil!”** I cried angrily.

The room burst into flames, a tail stuttered out of my back, and horns pushed out of my forehead painfully.

You would think everyone would have been used to me exploding things by then, but people still started screaming. I think my eyes were glowing.

Baz put his hands on my shoulders. I’m not sure how I didn’t notice him approaching me, but suddenly he was there. The flames were reflected in his eyes – I had an awful moment where I remembered he was flammable.

“Simon, Simon, Simon,” he said forcefully, and it was hypnotizing, “put this fire out.”

“I don’t, I don’t know how,” I was sobbing, but not crying. Dry sobbing. It was hard to breathe. There was a lot of smoke.

“Make a wish,” he said. I actually stared at him for a second.

“What?”

Penny shrieked at me to do what he said. The ends of her hair were slightly on fire. I broke eye contact with Baz and looked around. He shook me back. I yelled.

**“Make a wish!”**

There was a whooshing sound; my ears popped. All the air in the room felt like it was sucked out, and then flooded back and left us all stumbling. I hadn’t gone off; the spell had actually worked fantastically – every fire within ten miles was probably extinguished. People came crashing through the door, teachers and students. Everybody had felt the impact.

Baz was still standing there, not looking winded at all, and for the first time I realised he hadn’t even been coughing. Vampire powers, I suppose.

“Simon Snow,” he said, and shook his head. He didn’t say anything else. It took a while to calm everyone down. He kept watching me, making sure I wasn’t going to go off.

I realised that I liked having him watch me.


	3. The third time

The third time was less accidental. I summoned him.

I was training in the woods with Penny, first off. It was late afternoon, after classes but before dinner. There’s this little clearing – nothing will grow there anymore because I went off there once.

She was trying to get me to fly, and I was terrified that I was going to launch off like a rocket and end up in Spain. Don’t tell me it wouldn’t happen. It might.

**“I believe I can fly!”** I muttered half-heartedly. My feet lifted off the ground briefly, not enough to count as flying, but enough for me to stumble back and land on my arse.

“Simon. The spell only works if you actually, truly, _believe_ you can fly.” Penny said tiredly. I lay back into the grass. A few seconds later, she sighed and lay down next to me.

“Why do you think I can’t do anything?”

“I’m not sure,” she answered truthfully.

What happened next was a blur. I think we were talking about Micah or something and this nasty beast came charging out of nowhere. The Humdrum would have sent it – I don’t even know what it was. It looked like a dinosaur to me at first – but it wasn’t a dragon. It was a big as a horse, and essentially looked like a huge lizard. With massive, massive teeth.

Penny jumped up immediately and started casting, her ring gleaming purple.

**“Get back!”** She was very impressive. Her voice didn’t shake at all, but the creature only took a few steps back and then jumped at her.

What I did, was jump in front. My sword was in my hand, not that I remember calling it. The beast’s skin was as tough as scales and it had landed directly on top of me and I was trying to stab its face so it would stop trying to bite my head off. And I did the first thing I thought of. I summoned Baz.

**“Speak of the devil!”**

And then he was there, stumbling, in his football gear. I probably interrupted training. He blinked a few times, taking everything in. I realised vaguely that I had used the spell correctly for the first time.

**“I’ll sweep you off your feet!”** He cast at the giant lizard. Kudos to him for taking it in his stride, I guess. His face hadn’t changed at all. He looked exactly as calm as he did when we learnt that spell in class.

The creature fell over. I shoved it off me and got up.

“Why am I always saving you, Chosen One? Did you seriously summon me here?” Baz snapped. I think I just beamed at him. Why did he keep rescuing my sorry self? If he really hated me, he would let me die.

**“It is what it is!”**

**“As you were!”**

**“Stand your ground!”**

**“Pick on someone your own size!”**

**“Nonsense!”**

Penny and Baz were casting madly. I had no idea what they were doing. I was trying to stab it, but mostly I was beating it down so it couldn’t move while the others spelled it. It was twisting and writhing and snapping, but the spells started taking effect and after a while, the creature had shrunk to the size of my hand. It turned out, Penny explained to me breathlessly, that someone had spelled a little lizard into a massive beast using an enlargement spell and set it loose. It really was just a lizard, then.

Penny, understandably, looked as though she had just hurtled spells to save her life. She was flustered, exhausted, and winded. She flattened back out on the grass.

Baz, the git, looked flawless. Not a hair out of place – except for the ones tastefully framing his face, but I had a feeling from looking at him that it was intentional, a look he was going for. His cheeks were a little flushed, however, and he had a panicked look in his eyes when he checked me for injuries.

“You are… so stupid. Couldn’t even fight a… bloody lizard. Are you hurt? Did it hurt you?”

I remember thinking that undone was a good look on him.


	4. The fourth time

The fourth time was, I’m embarrassed to admit, definitely not an accident.

I just wanted to see if I could make him save me again. I quite enjoyed having him look scared, vulnerable – I like having him come to my rescue instead of firing insults at me while I studied. I wanted him to look at me again. I swear. I only wanted to see what would happen.

So I cut myself.

Not much. Just a little. I was trimming my hair – “Just let me use magic,” Penny always says, annoyed, - and I remembered that one time, this kid in one of my homes hit his head on the edge of a table. And there was heaps of blood, but one of the carers calmed everyone down by telling us that “…head wounds bleed a lot. The amount of blood from a head wound is often way worse than the actual injury itself.”

I’m not saying that I stabbed myself in the head _just_ to get attention from Baz.

But yes, I did sort of do that.

“Snakes alive, Snow!”

I hadn’t even left the bathroom yet. He could smell my blood from the other side of the door.

“I uh, cut myself,” I stuttered. It did actually hurt, even though it was technically only a scratch. All the blood was making me a bit woozy, and I’m not even a squeamish person. Some of it was on the floor already. Merlin, head wounds really do bleed a lot.

“Bloody _hell,_ ” Baz growled, “what did you do this time? How hard is it for you to stay out of trouble?” I could hear him pacing, really fast.

I stumbled to the door. “Should I come out, or… keep the door shut?”

“Are you wearing your cross?”

“Yeah,”

“I’m coming in.”

He broke the door down, completely obliterated it. Tore the handle right off. “Jesus Christ. I could have opened it,” I said. I swore like a normal, because the last time I cut myself shaving was in a home. He wasn’t listening, anyway. We were halfway down the stairs already, him carrying me.

“Do you know how idiotic that was? I could have _eaten you._ ” Baz sounds funny when he gets angry. His voice was blurred around the edges, and smeared about, like he was trying to speak around a missing tooth. Or… extra teeth, in his case.

“You need to be more…” he groaned, stopped moving for a second. Drops of my blood hit the floor. “Careful.” Did he just confess to being a vampire? For real? I remembered that I wasn’t wearing a shirt. His jumper sleeves were cold. His hands were a bit warmer, but colder than me.

“You’re so alive,” he slurred, as if reading my thoughts. Is that something vampires can do?

Dammit. This was such a bad idea. I’m such a moron.

“Don’t eat me,” I murmured. He muttered something which I couldn’t hear because his hand was covering his mouth and nose. He began moving again.

He handed me over to the nurses at the infirmary when we got there and tore off. I told them timidly that I had cut my head trying to trim my undercut and that he was afraid of blood. They bought it. I guess they would. ‘Vampire’ isn’t everyone’s automatic assumption, yeah.

They asked me why I didn’t just use magic to cut my hair. I shrugged.

Baz had come back to the room a few hours later, looking better. (He probably went and ate some rats. What a freak. But at least he didn’t eat me.) He glared at me. But I had come to the conclusion that he really didn’t hate me – he actively stopped himself from ripping me apart and carried me to the infirmary for Merlin’s sake.

There was a gauze pad stuck to my head. It was clean, smelt like antiseptic, and was no longer bleeding. Baz sat down on his bed, facing me. He pinched the bridge of his nose, and pushed back his hair, breathing out heavily.

“I could have killed you,” he said eventually, without looking at me.

“You really are a vampire,” I said without looking at him.

He didn’t say anything.

“But you didn’t kill me,” I continued. “You didn’t.”

He looked up, and then away. “Don’t cut yourself again, moron.”

“It was an accident,” I mumbled.

I knew then something had changed.


	5. Addicted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's short on purpose, I swear

I was addicted. I cast spells wrong on purpose so that he would freak out and tell me I was ridiculous.

**“You’re getting warmer!”** I cast at a blanket on a chilly night. Baz shoved me out of the way when the bed went up in flames. “What were you _thinking_?” He cried. “You can’t even cast that spell on a scone and not set the room on fire.”

I would trip over things when he was around because I knew his arm would fly out and stop me.

“For someone so close to the ground, you’d think you would know where to put your feet,” he snapped. “For someone with your head so far up your arse, you sure have good reflexes,” I retorted, pulled my arm away, and walked off.

I realised a couple minutes later that that wasn’t really an insult, but I didn’t care. Being close to him was exhilarating – maybe because I knew he didn’t _have_ to catch me. There was always a chance he could ignore me. I knew he could kill me in my sleep whenever he wanted.

It made me feel good, knowing that he wouldn’t.


	6. The last time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We all knew they would collide eventually.

The last time was an accident.

It had been a while since I started taking unnecessary risks around him. (One might argue that standing next to him was an unnecessary risk, however.) Baz still sneered at me when I looked at him, and if I did something wrong he would still make fun of me, but it was weird. Weird knowing that if I fell down some stairs, he would catch me, and if I cut myself, he wouldn’t suck my blood. I couldn’t figure out why, and it was eating me up inside almost worse than when I actually thought he _was_ hoping for my demise. He was off on his own a lot – plotting, I guess, but I don’t know if I can call it that anymore. He was definitely not plotting my death, I knew that. I just didn’t know what to do with this information.

I would rationalise to myself that it was all part of a plan. That he would make me trust him, make me let my guard up around him, and _then_ kill me. But I didn’t really believe it. And anyway, if that’s what he wanted, it was working. He didn’t scare me anymore. Yeah, he pushed me too far and knew exactly what to say to hurt me – Baz obviously didn’t like me. But he didn’t want me to die. Yet. Or something.

So some things had changed.

But Baz wasn’t the only one who didn’t like me. Lots of families disagreed with the Mage, not just Penny and Baz’, and their children resented me. I mean, they hated my guts.

Like that kid who tripped me down the stairs.

I get it. I mean, being the Chosen One sucks the majority of the time, but I can see how someone might be jealous or resentful. Whenever someone laughs or makes a snide comment about my lack of control, I just shrug it off – or let my magic simmer to the edges of my teeth a bit. That usually makes them skittish.

I think Baz was the first one to make it known to my face, though. But he never really… I don’t know. He _did_ try to kill me, but not because he wanted to, I think. I guess. No one had ever tried to beat me up except him, and even then I almost always threw the first punch.

But then these kids decided to form some sort of gang. At first it was just following me around. Calling me names. Spelling my books on fire. Tripping me up.

I didn’t really care.

I even mentioned it to Baz one time, and he scoffed. “What do they think they’re going to accomplish? You’ve killed dragons. Do they not realise that you have bigger problems?”

“Yeah, like you,” I rolled my eyes. He frowned.

But one day, I was making my way up from watching Baz at football and they were standing at the bottom of the stairs. I didn’t recognise them, but they looked younger than us so I’m not sure how they got in. But anyway I was trying to get past them – obviously they were trying to stop me – and one of them threw a punch. I wasn’t expecting them to go that far, honestly. I took a few steps back in surprise. My face didn’t even hurt, but what was I going to do? Beat up a bunch of kids? Summon my sword and slaughter them? If I tried using a spell, I’d most likely blow us all up.

“You’re the Mage’s heir,” someone said. I nodded, shrugged. He folded his arms. “The Mage’s Men broke into my house yesterday, ransacked some of my stuff. My mum was terrified.”

I swallowed. It was probably true. I said honestly, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“You could tell him to stop,” a different boy said. I replied, “no, he doesn’t listen to me. I just do what he tells me to.”

He snarled. “You’re weak, that’s what you are.”

So I let them attack me. When my head hit the ground I thought to myself how lucky it was that I wasn’t on the stairs yet. One of them cast spells while the others took turns kicking me and stuff – I don’t really remember. But I remember being on the ground a lot.

**“Get down!”** Someone laughs. I didn’t even know that was a spell, but I had already hit the floor.

One of them stomped on my hand. I screamed and curled into a ball, and they laughed. My magic was directionless, choking, swirling. It felt like fire. They kept hitting me, but every time a kick landed sparks would fly. I was going to explode.

I thought my ribs were smashed. There was no blood, though, except on my face, and I could still breathe, barely. My nose was bleeding – not sure if it was the magic or the floor that had broken it.

“Some Chosen One,” said one of the boys.

“You aren’t even fighting back!” Yelled another.

“Tell the Mage this is a message for him,” barked the first.

“You’re the worst Chosen One who’s ever been chosen,” one snapped.

“That’s my fucking line,” said Baz.

He snatched one of them by the back of the neck, tossed him two metres into the wall like he weighed nothing. He was still in his football jumper thing and I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen – until he kicked the other guy in the stomach and the kid flew across the room and hit the ground.

“Baz,” I inhaled through my teeth.

He turned to the other boys, teeth showing, hair wild. He was hunched over like a demon, a real demon. I swear his teeth looked like bloody chopsticks pushing past his lips, and his eyes were dark and narrowed. He looked like he was going to kill someone.

“Baz,” I said again. “Why? Why do you always…?”

“No one gets to ruin your life except me.”

The other kids saw his face, turned, and ran, leaving their friends behind, who staggered after them frantically. We watched them go.

“I should have killed them,” Baz growled once they had left. I wheezed out a laugh – ow, ribs – and his neck snapped to me. “What?” He asked. “I should have. They’ll tell everyone.”

I’ve been telling people for years, I almost said. But he got down on his knees and I knew he was thinking the same thing, so I didn’t say it.

“You’re not a killer,” I bubbled instead as he knelt beside me. He smelt like forest and damp things (catacombs) but still looked like a movie star. He pushed the hair and wetness off my face and then looked like he wanted to die. He stared at my blood on his fingers with his beautiful eyes. I could tell he was struggling not to lick it.

“I am.” He whispered. I closed my eyes for a second, dizzy.

As he helped me to my feet, slowly, I asked him, “have you ever killed anyone?”

“No, Snow, I have not.” He wrapped an arm around me even though my legs weren’t really damaged, and we lurched to the infirmary, again.

I shrugged. “Not a killer, then.”

“There’s something really wrong with you, you know that?”

“Says the vampire.”

“For the last time, Snow, I’m not a bloody vampire.”

“I’m looking at your mouth right now. You’re absolutely a vampire.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. I can tell. Your teeth. Long. Your face. Beautiful. Mysterious. This is all proof.”

I think I swayed a bit, just so he would catch me again. He did.

“You probably have a concussion. No one will ever believe you.”

I lifted a finger and touched his mouth. “You’re right. The fangs are gone.”

“Yes,” he replied cautiously.

“I have zero proof now.”

He smirked, even though we were both delirious, and it made me just as annoyed as it always did.  I was still touching his mouth. “The stuff you said about my face being beautiful will still be true.”

“Shit. You’re right,” I said, and kissed him. He purred something against my mouth, and I stood on my tiptoes and pushed back. I wrapped my arms around him tighter – I remember, because he made a noise in the back of his throat – and he pulled me even closer, clawing at the back of my jumper. He made disbelieving sounds and couldn’t seem to breathe – I wasn’t letting him. (He would always catch me.)

I realised he had been plotting my death the whole time. Like this, with his hands on my neck, my pulse, and my fingers in his hair, and his back against the wall and our noses touching. I really was dying, falling, spinning out of control. Crashing into him (but I’d been crashing toward him forever, hadn’t I? We just finally collided). Baz was tearing me apart and I was letting him.

Maybe it was the concussion, at the time.

But I think there are worse ways to go.

“Simon,” he said.

I kissed him harder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo thanks for reading! Hope ya'll enjoyed. Give me a comment, scream to me about Snowbaz, I don't care. Peace


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